Since 2010, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) has periodically administered the "Strong Foundations" survey, which documents the content, structure, and effective use of state postsecondary student unit record systems (PSURSs). This report highlights the results of the fourth administration of the survey,…

District costs for teachers' health insurance are, on average, higher then employer costs for private-sector professionals. How much of this is attributable to collective bargaining? This article examines the question using data from the National Compensation Survey (NCS) of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the state of Wisconsin. In…

Systematic evaluation is an essential tool for understanding program effectiveness. This article describes the pilot test of a statewide evaluation tool for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed). A computer algorithm helped Community Nutrition Educators (CNEs) build surveys specific to their varied educational settings…

Over the past decade, educators and policymakers have used a variety of approaches to designing and implementing teacher compensation programs. These approaches include federal incentive funds, state-level programs, and district initiatives. This article reviews 6 such programs in order to identify themes and draw conclusions relevant to…

This chartbook uses the 2007 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) to report on recent findings on children with special health care needs (CSHCN) in the United States. The NSCH provides a unique view of CSHCN in the context of where they live, play and go to school. It also allows comparisons to children without special health care needs.…

This article examines the employment and child care responses of families participating in 10 experimental welfare reform programs conducted in the United States between 1989 and 2002. For the programs analyzed, child care use increases by about the same amount as the increase in employment. Most of the increased child care comprises informal care…

Alternative teacher certification literature has contributed significantly to our understanding of this approach to teacher preparation. However, this literature has more often than not treated alternative teacher certification programs (ATCPs) as a black box, thus ignoring program heterogeneity. The present study examines how and why five ATCPs…

This study attempted to identify efforts to evaluate programs for gifted and talented students in 122 Texas school districts and to compare these practices with those recommended in the literature and with Texas Education Association guidelines. Areas examined included informal and formal assessment of student and teacher identification practices,…

This report describes an evaluation of charter schools in Arizona. Eighty-two charter schools representing the 137 charter-school holders in the state participated in the study. The schools were selected to be representative of all state charter schools with regard to location, population density, grade level, and sponsoring agency. A total of 303…

This report presents an evaluation of area studies and ethnic studies programs offered at institutions in the State University System (SUS) of Florida. The programs covered include domestically and internationally oriented interdisciplinary programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The internationally oriented programs are Latin…

School districts in Michigan wishing to implement community school programs have access to state grant moneys. Analysis of questionnaires sent to Michigan's school superintendents in 1977 revealed that those whose districts participated in the grant program supported more fully and their districts followed more closely the definition of the…

Drawing from on-site assessments of the implementation and effectiveness of 30 selected Extended Opportunity Programs and Services (EOPS) programs operating at California community colleges, this report synthesizes information collected between September 1985 and May 1986 through student and faculty/staff surveys, 1,025 detailed interviews with…

After 10 years of development, the California Statewide Automated Child Support System, run by the Department of Social Services (DSS), has been scrapped and the state has begun developing a new child support collection computer. This report evaluates the performance of publicly-funded child support collection programs in California, examining the…

The "Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1998" requires that the Secretary provide the appropriate committees of Congress copies of annual reports received by the department from each eligible agency that receives funds under the Act. Congress has made "accountability for results" a central focus of the…

A series of projects were conducted in Maryland as part of an effort to develop a valid and reliable student database for planning, decision making, and Vocational Education Data System reporting; and a systematic and objective procedure to evaluate the quality of occupational programs in Maryland's community colleges. The projects had three…